Untitled: A Junior Conceptual Project by Alexander Barnes (2015)

I am exploring the feeling of guilt through the experience of standing up for myself. For this image, I used three primary mediums: Newspaper, Burlap, and Digital Applications. To start off, I took an image of burlap and imported it into Adobe Lightroom. In Lightroom, I brought down the vibrancy of the image to give it a washed out look, as if the burlap were an anachronism, and I applied a vignette to the outer edges for a dramatic effect. I then imported the image into photoshop. Separately, in Adobe Illustrator, I made the design in the center, which is the focal point of the image. I applied multiple effects to the triangles for texture such as grain and halftone. I then exported the file to a Portable Network Graphics file (.png) and embedded into the burlap image's Photoshop file. Using displacement, I incorporated the design into the burlap texture to make a realistic effect. I then scanned newspaper clippings and embedded them into the Photoshop file- manipulating them individually with the warp tool. This is what created the "blowing away" effect. Finally, I drew in shadows for the clippings for added realism and 3D effect.

To reflect my concept statement, I cut out anything that pertains to violence, death, and general crime from the local newspaper. I used this to create a violent and dark feeling in the audience to help portray the feeling of guilt- as if something happened or has gone wrong. The illustrated mountains are supposed to represent strength and power that a person may feel when they stand up for themselves, because mountains generally feel very large and overwhelming at first sight.